Harry Litman [00:00:07] Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. Bells rang out around the country and the world, from Boston to Mumbai and Philadelphia to Paris, where the mayor tweeted, "Welcome back, America." After two long days when the networks held back, even though the math looked indomitable, a cache of votes from Pennsylvania brought a cascade of announcements from five networks in two minutes, making it official that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the next president and vice president of the United States. The victory vindicated Biden's consistent strategy of rebuilding the blue wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that Trump had breached in 2016, and doing so with a campaign that stayed calm and steady from post to post. The recognition of Trump's, loss even more than Biden's victory, hit home with a quality far more dramatic than a typical presidential election.
There was an exultant feel, like the end of a foreign occupation, with people suddenly realizing that they are no longer under a tyrant's yoke. As a reveler in Boston put it, 'we've been holding our breath for four years.' There seemed a giddiness just in the sense of a return to normalcy from the grotesque faux-Trump family to the real Biden family, from the lying and viciousness of the third rate bully, still proclaiming he'd won the election, to the everyday decency of the next president and the familiar sense of America that he embodies. Addressing the nation Saturday evening from Wilmington, Delaware, both Biden and Harris sounded healing, inclusive tones and resolved to begin immediately the hard work of battling the virus (which continues to set records), repairing the economy, and tackling racial injustice and climate change.
Trump, meanwhile, vowed to bring a flurry of new lawsuits in a vain attempt to reverse the tide. Biden has inherited one of the toughest hands in presidential history, not simply the number and magnitude of the messes Trump will leave behind, but the likely antagonism of coordinate branches. Mitch McConnell, the betting favorite to remain majority leader in the Senate, will try to tie him in knots at every turn, starting even possibly with Biden's own executive branch appointments, and simply refuse to bring to the floor any progressive legislation. To assess what the campaign results say about where we are as a country and to look ahead to the Biden presidency, we have three of the keenest political observers in the country. They are:
Natasha Bertrand, whom we also call 'Scoop' is the national security correspondent at Politico, and a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. She has broken literally dozens of stories in the Trump era, she previously was a staff writer for The Atlantic. Natasha, thanks as always for coming.
Natasha Bertrand [00:03:18] Thanks for having me.
Harry Litman [00:03:20] Joe Lockhart. Joe was previously press secretary under President Clinton from 1998 to 2000, and before then to a number of prominent officials, including Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. His communications consulting firm, Glover Park Group, has worked for Facebook and the NFL, among many others. Joe, welcome.
Joe Lockhart [00:03:42] Thanks for having me.
Harry Litman [00:03:43] Mike Murphy, a guest here on Talking Feds for the first time, has been a political consultant for many years to prominent Republicans, including John McCain and Mitt Romney. He is also an NBC analyst and a TV writer/producer partnering with Hollywood whiz kid Ed Radlick, and he is co-director of the USC Center for the Political Future and co-host of the Hacks on Tap podcast. Mike, welcome to Talking Feds.
Mike Murphy [00:04:12] It is good to be here.
Harry Litman [00:04:15] All right. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives, but let's begin with a quick postmortem on the campaign. Let me start here. How would you put the Biden winning strategy in a sentence?
Mike Murphy [00:04:26] Not Trump; comfortable; fix COVID; end the chaos.
Harry Litman [00:04:32] OK, semicolons there, but that's a sentence.
Natasha Bertrand [00:04:35] Not Trump; stayed focused, and really drove black voter turnout.
Harry Litman [00:04:41] Yeah.
Joe Lockhart [00:04:41] Knew exactly the coalition he needed to put together, exactly how many votes he needed to get, and stayed true to that strategy, no matter how many people criticized them.
Harry Litman [00:04:53] Yeah, that's what really struck me. And Joe and Mike, you've been inside the cauldron of a campaign, it seems to me as an outside observer, it's almost par for the course for people to get nervous, have changes in direction, but they thought blue wall it seemed to me from the start, and they stayed calm and methodical and quiet. And then as you both imply, Mike and Natasha, they were smart to make sure this was a referendum on Trump and not the sort of standard election where Trump's playbook could be just try to trash Biden, they really kept the focus. Sometimes I think he was criticized for not being enough on the hustings, but you have the impression of a very professional, well-seasoned group knowing exactly the bet that they were planning to place and just doubling down all the way.
Mike Murphy [00:05:45] Yeah, they were like the ball team that played the fundamentals. They knew it's a referendum on the incumbent and the incumbent was in trouble, let the incumbent stay in trouble because Trump just can't change up his act. You know, he's the atomic clock of being Donald Trump. They knew what they had was empathy. That's who Biden is. They thought, boy, we can, if that works, put a big magnifying glass on it. And they were resilient, they didn't let the cable TV bloviating cycle run their campaign. They had a very one foot in front of the other, and I thought they were good and the last thing is, and this might be brilliant planning, it might also be circumstances turning into luck. But the fact that in the general election they were broke early, didn't let them do what the Trump guys did, which was blow a lot of money on stupidity.
So when the money came rolling in, there was never a day in advertising from the convention to Election Day where Biden wasn't beating Trump on advertising in the key states. So Biden could outmuscle Trump on the airwaves, every time Trump got a little offense going, Biden had the money in the Michigans and Wisconsins, et cetera, to push back. And then he had enough money to go start fights in other places to drain Trump's resources, like Florida, which ultimately he lost. But that was kinda Trump's Stalingrad. Trump defunded his other states to fight this epic battle in Florida. And so Biden just played the money-spending side really smart.
Joe Lockhart [00:07:02] I think one of the very smart things they did, any presidential race is generally defined by who can make the other side the issue. Could the, was this going to be about Biden, the socialists, the senile, or was this going to be about Trump, his erratic performance? And I think the Biden people understood that Donald Trump had a very difficult time making anything about anybody other than himself. And they stood back at the right times and let Trump talk about himself because he couldn't make it about Biden, because he only sees himself. Some days were better spent in the basement, letting Trump talk about himself.
Natasha Bertrand [00:07:39] That's exactly what I was going to say also, is that Trump and his allies really never figured out how to effectively attack Biden. They never were able to really legitimately kind of frame him as corrupt in a way that they tried to frame Hillary Clinton as such, and it kind of stuck in 2016 because it was built up over years and years and years of them trying to demonize Hillary Clinton and allege that she was a corrupt person and it just never stuck the way that it did with her, with regard to Joe Biden. They tried, I mean, the last minute push by Trump to make Hunter Biden and his business dealings an issue and this whole laptop saga that really fizzled. None of it worked. And, of course, we have the added benefit of not having any real interference by foreign adversaries this time around.
Four years ago, obviously, the Russians did everything that they could to try to help Trump win this time, because I think Hillary Clinton wasn't running against him, and of course, Vladimir Putin hates Hillary Clinton with a passion. They seem to have not have tried as hard, and that was something that pleasantly surprised a lot of national security officials as well, so it was a combination of the Biden campaign just allowing Trump to implode, of Trump never really finding a line of attack that was resonating on a wide level, and the reluctance of foreign adversaries to really delve into this fight this time around.
Harry Litman [00:09:02] Yeah, at least as best we can tell, right? And there were a few dogs that didn't bark, a big one being Hunter Biden, or there were worries about the DOJ coming in, etc.. I'm no political savant, but I would offer a corollary to Joe's rule, which is, seems to me the campaign that's changing up strategies and doing new things every couple of weeks is likely the one that's losing, and that was Trump and very much not Biden this cycle.
Joe Lockhart [00:09:29] Yeah, I'd argue actually that there wasn't foreign interference in this election, there was domestic interference. What we didn't see in 2016 were groups like Mike's Group, Project Lincoln and some others, and I think what they did, and I don't know, y'know some point in the postmortem, we'll see how many votes got stripped off, but they did a very important job in setting the narrative and getting people talking about the things Trump didn't want talked about. And that's what the Russians did in 2016 with WikiLeaks dumps and all of that, and every day there was this just more and more chum for the media to chew on, and I think that had a huge impact and it may not have moved a lot of Republicans, but it very much helped set the narrative for the campaign.
Harry Litman [00:10:16] Mike, why is that? Ninety three percent I think he still gets of Republicans, did that surprise you?
Mike Murphy [00:10:21] We actually don't know. We...so, Republican Voters Against Trump, which I'm strategic adviser to, we had kind of a three part plan. Part one was to do this permission campaign, and we got about 900 people to kind of talk to their laptop and make ads about why they couldn't do it, talk about being pro-life, Republican, their kind of history, why they just couldn't go there for Trump. And we tested the best ones and then pumped them out on digital advertising in Pennsylvania, Arizona and North Carolina. We've managed to chip away, the problem is the exits aren't any good till they're weighted to real results. This is another year where the exit polls were close but no cigar. So we're going to wait and see, but we tracked that and did a lot of data work, and we think just taking him from 93 down to 90 or 89 in a few places, which I think you're going to see in the Pennsylvanias and Wisconsins was meaningful. The other two things we did was we decided to start a real war in Florida, because we thought two things happened, either we break them early with Florida because they count the vote quick, or we cost them a ton of money.
And so the Bloomberg guys, we were in there 10 million, all targeted. And most of our counties, by the way, Trump declined. The problem was Miami-Dade just vanished off the map, a twenty point decline from Hillary Clinton for Joe, and that's a bunch of other stuff. And then finally, we were always trying to feed the news cycle with newsworthy people from the administration, like Olivia Troy, because they had compelling stories. It took huge courage for these kind of career people to come out. And then, you know, General Hayden, we would just have credible people. And as Joe said, we knew Trump would see it, the national media that is always going to be interested in personnel defections and kind of Washington stories would amplify it. And for not a lot of money, we were just constantly on offense doing that. We worked hard, and so we got a bunch of happy Republicans who were defectors, and now I like to joke that I'm renting, not buying, but next job is going to be rebuilding the Republican Party and that's going to be a lift.
Harry Litman [00:12:12] All right, well, let's move to the flip side then, which is an overall performance, not so much of the Biden Harris campaign, but of the party in the House, the Senate, the state elections that fell short of at least hopes that had begun to develop almost into expectations by the time of the election. So in retrospect, did the Dems overall do something wrong? Did the Republicans do something right? Or is it just we again, underestimated this unyielding partisan divide in the country, even leaving Trump out of it?
Natasha Bertrand [00:12:46] I think the Democrats are still trying to figure out what happened, they are obviously not completely demoralized because they won the presidency, but they did not do as well as they had expected in the down ballot races. So we're already seeing sniping going on between the more progressive parts of the party and the more moderate parts. We saw that in a caucus phone call last week that was immediately leaked to reporters. There was some more of the moderate Democrats saying that the defund the police movement and things like that had almost cost them their race, even though no Democrat campaigned on that issue. But there's a lot of finger pointing that's going on now, and I think Democrats are coming to terms with the fact that this was not a repudiation of Trumpism, even though it seemed to be a repudiation on some levels of Trump himself.
So we now see that Republicans who want to have a chance in 2024 and who hope to be the frontrunners in their races then are doing everything that they can to curry favor with Trump and his children and his allies because they realize that Trumpism itself is not going away, that a very, very, very large portion of the country hoped that by electing Trump and by electing Republicans who agree with his principles, if you can call them that, and his policies, that those are going to continue, even if Trump goes quietly into that good night. So Democrats, I think, still have a chance of taking the Senate. Fairly small chance, but we have two runoffs in Georgia and we're going to see a lot of money pouring into those races, obviously. But they're upset and they are questioning why they didn't do better in these races.
Joe Lockhart [00:14:26] I'll speak for myself as a Democrat, I am the opposite of demoralized. I'm charged up. I think there's some people within the party that had their interests not well served and they're talking about it. And even if we had swept the Senate, the House and the White House, we were going to have this fight as the party. The fight between left and center, that was inevitable. It's actually, I think, a good thing for the party if we can do it the right way. So you're seeing a little bit of that, but I think Democrats, if you get outside the punditry, are very happy. You saw it on the streets last night, and what I attribute Democratic Senate candidates in particular and also some House underperforming, is I think we as Democrats and I think the pollsters also underestimated the value and the strength of the down ballot Trump effect for Republicans. I don't think anyone was expecting that many Republicans to show up, and they they voted along the party line. The recent 2018 was a Democratic blue wave as Trump wasn't on the ticket, and a lot of people just stayed home. So when I look at Georgia, if you asked anybody a year ago, could you win two runoffs in Georgia, the answer would have been, are you crazy? I don't think it's so crazy right now. I think without Trump on the ballot, with both of those races being very, potentially very close, it could happen.
Mike Murphy [00:15:45] I agree with a lot of that. I mean, I think if you step back, it was well known that Donald Trump was in political trouble for the last two years. You look at the midterms, look at the special elections, so that with a little - not a little, a lot of overenthusiastic polling - kind of morphed into the idea that we're going to have this big wave and the Republicans are going to get wiped out from coast to coast. Then you have an election that sets a turnout record of all time with the number one vote getter, Joe Biden, the number two, Donald J. Trump. So everybody's army of all sizes and shapes turned out. And in the more competitive states, there was a return of something that kind of conventional wisdom had said was gone forever, and I never believed it, ticket splitting. You had people who had enough with Trump but were more comfortable with their local Republican. You also had a good incumbency factor working in some of those Senate races. A great example, Susan Collins, and I told one of her consultants, a friend of mine, that you should all do t-shirts for next time called 'Senator Susan Collins. Next time, try kryptonite,' because she had Biden wipe out the statewide number and she hung on.
She knew how to use incumbency to run the senator pothole campaign about local issues. Joni Ernst to some extent in a much more favorable state so, I think there was kind of an appetite whetted by Trump's political problem that Republicans down the ballot in competitive states with a lot of turnout were able to carve things out. I also think the Dems got into the stake of Trump, Trump, Trump, which works in the presidential election where you can fire at him, but it wasn't a clean debate like 2018 was on preexisting conditions. That said, the key mission was beating Donald Trump, which is hard to beat an incumbent president, seeing how this is number five in a long, long time, over a hundred years. So I'm kind of with Joe. They're in a stronger position than they were, and you can count a House seat or two, there was no huge coattail effect, but the Dems are much, much better position than they were. And those two runoffs are going to be uphill, but not impossible. I agree with that.
Natasha Bertrand [00:17:41] I just have a question and I'm curious what Joe might think. The, speaking of sniping by the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, I'm just wondering what you make of the attacks by AOC the other day on groups like Project Lincoln alleging that they took finite money and resources away from voter turnout operations on the ground by people like Stacey Abrams, for example, and how now she says that that money should be funneled now towards those operations in the future. I'm just wondering what you what you guys think of that, because it seems like it's, it's definitely a harbinger of things to come.
Joe Lockhart [00:18:16] Yeah. I mean, I think this fight was inevitable. The party has to figure out whether it's going to lean further left or further right. The coalition that Joe Biden put together cannot completely co-exist when it comes to issues, and the party does have to sort it out. I think AOC was reacting to some things that were being sent, I'd argue she overreacted, but I don't think this is the main game. This may be the game of people who cover Capitol Hill and like to see who's mad at who, but I don't think there's a lot of people out in the country, at least among my pretty big Twitter group that is worried about this. There's a little bit of sniping, of course they are. I want to just come back to something that Mike said and underline it, which is: it is really, really hard to beat an incumbent president. This is the first time since FDR beat Herbert Hoover that an incumbent president was defeated without a significant third party. So a real head to head race, John Anderson played a big role in 1980. Ross Perot played a big role in 1992. So this was a straight up, an incumbent president with all of the power of the presidency, who at the end of the day is going to lose by - Mike, you may know better because I know California's still counting - maybe seven million votes?
Mike Murphy [00:19:33] It could get there, yeah six and a half to seven. And the other thing, you know, I'm not part of Lincoln. They had some different tactics than we did, but we're all in the anti-Trump army of light together. I take the same view of AOC that Speaker Pelosi does, which is chattering troublemaker. But the progressive wing has energy and she speaks for it. But I'm kind of with Joe. I don't think people in the real world care. I mean, if she wants to get in the fight with the Lincoln Group and she can audit them and they can audit her, who knows? Not my battle. I don't think many people care. I do think though, some of the moderates in the House, you know, they had a caucus phone call, there were some sparks, are worried that the progressive wing is fuel for opponents to define them.
And I think there's some truth in that. I think that the progressive wing is great at winning very, very safe districts, that a box of hammers with a D on it would probably win. And it does give, and you're going to see this in Georgia, because they're going to run them as super progressives and we'll see if it has traction. The Democrats won't run that way, but the Repubs will try to define them. So I think some of the moderate Democrats are right to be concerned with some of the fiery progressive rhetoric. But that's an old fight, and we have it in the Republican Party, too. We've got the Freedom Caucus, which is always gold for Democrats. So it's just I guess it's politics as usual.
Natasha Bertrand [00:20:49] What do you think the role will be for Republican voters against Trump and the Lincoln Project and those kinds of groups moving forward, now that Trump's been defeated?
Mike Murphy [00:20:56] Well, this is one difference. I think. Lincoln says they're going to go jump into the Georgia race, and Lincoln does more low dollar fundraising. And I think that's probably what got the ire of AOC because they all kind of compete. We tried online, but we only raised about a million and a half, I think, which we're very grateful for, and we put 90 cents of every dollar to work. But we're not, we're Republican voters against Trump. So we're going to be in the internal Republican Party fight, but we didn't go do the Senate races. Lincoln went after Susan Collins with a ton of money. The Lincoln guys are kind of Jefferson-Lincoln Project now because they're totally on the D side. And I understand the argument, I got a lot of friends over there.
We're still trying to fix the Republican Party because we think the center right, it needs to get back to being an important and respectable voice on policy. I mean, I didn't - I voted for Biden. I contributed to him, helped run a big effort to assist him. And I'm glad he won, but I'm, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not I'm not left of center. I'm right of center. So that's where I think Lincoln and our vet may go in different directions. But again, I can't speak for Lincoln. I just know they've said they're going to they're taking contributions now to go hop into the, the Senate race on the Democratic side, and we're not going to do that.
Joe Lockhart [00:22:04] I think if you look at the Senate races in Georgia, I don't think the Lincoln Project's going to have that much of an impact. They may play, and they may move a point or two. I think you're going to see the Stacey Abrams experiment play out in very real time, which is you don't have to be a moderate Democrat to win in Georgia. You can be a progressive Democrat, but you've got to organize to make sure that progressive Democrats, the Democratic constituency, gets out and votes. And frankly, it's the only choice they have. I don't think either Osthoff or Warnaw can move back to the middle in two months, but I do think that they'll win if they can create more excitement on the democratic progressive side and turn out black Georgians, turn out Latino Georgians, and win by turnout. And that's a possibility.
Mike Murphy [00:22:54] I think that is correct with a caveat, they can't scare the suburbs away. Because the whole thing is metro Atlanta, and you've got to get the Biden formula that worked in the suburbs around Atlanta to work as well as the Fulton County stuff did.
Harry Litman [00:23:07] Just that we're talking about it is pretty remarkable, and you mentioned both the black and Latino vote. This may be for the next podcast, but a surprising thing for the Democratic Party to take account of is that Trump actually improved. This is the story of Dade County, his status with both black and Latino voters from 2016, especially among men. All right, it's now time to take a moment for our sidebar feature, which explains some of the terms and relationships that are foundational to legal or political events that are typically in the news, but not generally explained.
And we're back to a bread and butter Feds topic: standards for murder prosecutions. What are the legal differences between different kinds of murders? And to tell us about that topic, we have a great sidebar reader: John Malkovich. John Malkovich, of course, is an American actor, voice actor, director, producer and fashion designer. He's appeared in more than 70 films, including The Killing Fields, Dangerous Liaisons and many others. And he's produced films such as Ghost World, Juno and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. He's received two Academy Award nominations for his performances in Places in the Heart and in the Line of Fire. I give you John Malkovich on standards for murder prosecutions.
John Malkovich [00:24:31] What are the levels of homicide under federal law? Murder, or homicide, is usually prosecuted in state court by district attorney or state attorney general. For murder to be a federal crime, it must implicate a specific federal interest. For example, a murder committed on federal property, like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, or the murder of a federal officer, or a murder touching on special federal interest, like the deprivation of federal constitutional rights may be tried in the federal court unprosecuted by United States attorney's office. Like state homicides, federal homicides vary in degree, according mainly to the defendant's state of mind when the murder occurred.
The main division is between murder on the one hand and manslaughter on the other. Murder has an old world antiquated definition under federal law: the unlawful killing of the human being with malice of forethought. Broken down, that definition includes a couple of basic elements. The killing must be: one, unlawful, so not legally justified in some way, and two, done with malice of forethought. In other words, thought through in advance as opposed to, for example, a killing done either unintentionally or in the heat of passion. Murder has two degrees under federal law. The degree charged depends on the facts at issue, and on Congress' assessment of the seriousness of the crime. If the killing was accomplished, for example, by poison or during the commission of another serious crime such as arson, kidnapping or sexual abuse, or if the killing was meticulously planned out in advance, it's a first degree murder. Otherwise, it will be charged and tried as a second degree murder offense.
That leaves manslaughter, which is an unlawful killing without malice of forethought. Manslaughter, like murder, breaks out into two varieties: voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary doesn't really mean that the defendant meant to kill, it means instead that the murder happened in a circumstance that would cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed, such as during a quarrel or in the heat of passion. Involuntary manslaughter generally entails doing something lawful, but in a way that is risky enough that it might produce another's death, like driving well over the speed limit, or while intoxicated. For Talking Feds. I'm John Malkovich.
Harry Litman [00:27:13] Thanks very much to John Malkovich. You can see John as the title character in the HBO drama series, The New Pope, and in the Netflix comedy series Space Force.
All right, let's talk now about the hand that President Biden will inherit when his hand goes up. It's a tough hand, right? I mean, I agree with Joe. I think everybody does, just the emotional high of Biden's victory. But: COVID now at new highs, unemployment stratospheric, McConnell, McConnell, McConnell, assuming that the Georgia duo don't come through. The Supreme Court limiting executive action, this center left fight, maybe Trump voters thinking fraud, et cetera. I don't remember any president starting out seemingly hamstrung on so many different levels and with so much hard work to do. It's like Obama in 2008, but with a much, much tougher set of circumstances with the coordinate branches. Am I being overly, overly negative about where he starts out?
Joe Lockhart [00:30:35] I think if you look at the Obama comparison, I think in many ways Obama came in at a tougher time. The world's capital markets were collapsing. We could have gone into a global depression. I think one of the things you've seen about COVID is the economy has held up a little bit stronger around the world than everyone says. And I think on COVID for, for Biden, there's not a lot of place to go but up. You know, that we've just had no policy on COVID. And if you listen to the public health experts, they believe that if we just do a series of things consistently that are more aggressive than what we're doing now, we will begin to flatten the curve again. And vaccines, you know, they were never coming by Election Day, but by the middle of next year, I think Dr. Fauci thinks we might have a program up and running. I think the big issue is going to be McConnell. You know, I think Republicans who have spent wildly over the last four years are all of a sudden going to find that fiscal conservatism is what they really meant to do, and not because they're fiscally conservative, but because they want to stick it to Biden and they want to win in 2024.
So I think the first big battle is going to be over stimulus. And we've got, this used to be Mnuchin and Nancy Pelosi and McConnell sitting it out. You've now got another Democrat at the table, Joe Biden, who doesn't approach things exactly the way Nancy Pelosi does, and I think Biden being able to navigate a generous stimulus plan and get that through, plus at least having, creating the impression that we're now aggressively taking this pandemic seriously as opposed to laughing at it, I think puts them off on a pretty good start. There are lots of potholes, as Mike and Nitasha know, something happens in the transition always, or in the first month, that takes your plans and throws them out the window. For Bill Clinton, it was don't ask, don't tell. And, you know, it was a month wasted on that. But I think these issues are so big and so profound, and then Biden and his team have the ability to manage them, that he may very well get off to a strong start. McConnell being the wild card.
Harry Litman [00:32:52] Although McConnell, it seems to me he could shut down everything, executive branch appointments, et cetera. But I do think he's got to play ball and will play ball on the stimulus. Do you guys agree?
Mike Murphy [00:33:03] He has his own politics, and first, this will shock kind of the people who've been kind of with the popcorn at home watching one of the cable channels rooting on their side, but privately, McConnell and Biden have a long and pretty good relationship. Biden's always been the one guy who could go cut a deal with McConnell, and he's played that role in the past. Now, the Repubs, win or lose Georgia will affect this, but it's going to be tight, and you're going to have a split in the Republican caucus. You're going to have young firebrands who want to go run for president, because they're all going to look at Kamala Harris and think - and all this early stuff is often proved wrong by events.
But they're going to assume, okay, Biden's too old, she's going to - in four years, she'll be the nominee and we can beat her in a general election. She's too liberal, she's no Obama, we can take her. So the Republican nomination is incredibly valuable. We got to go Trump. So the, the Tom Cottons and the Josh Hollis, the young senators want that. They're going to do kind of a Trump-lite hybrid thing and race right for the caucus and primary voters. Then you're going to have the more pragmatic Republicans looking at hanging onto the majority by one damn seat, which is not an unlikely outcome here, thinking, you know, I don't want to go in the minority. I actually would like to get something done.
And Biden can actually use that to put himself in the center, because if you get a few Romneys and Murkowskis and a Susan Collins, a few of them to be able to deal on some of this stuff, it gives Biden a way to hold off his progressives because he can say, look, I'd love to build the solar-powered Rickshaw factory but, you know, I'm never going to get that through the R's, but I can't get this infrastructure thing done for jobs, like I can do a little here and a little there. So it'll depend if McConnell really is going to break fingers to try to hold the caucus together in full opposition, or if Biden can peel a few people off with a more centrist thing, I actually think they will get a stimulus deal done because I've never met a politician of either party who ultimately doesn't like giving money to voters.
But the Repubs are gonna - Joe is so right, they're going to have this awakening, 'Hey, wait!' And I would say as a conservative, it's damn long overdue because we are spending World War II money in real dollars on this. And there comes a time when the music does stop, but most of the economists say the sooner you do it, the less expensive damage you have to pay for it later. And I know from talking to some Repubs in the Senate that there is an understanding of that. So we'll see, I mean, Biden is a bit of a throwback in a good way. He is a politician in the real sense, which is somebody wheeling and dealing in closed doors to try to get weird personalities to one place in the LBJ style. He's not a modern brand politician. You know, he's not a performer. And so he may have the skill set to get modest things done. But as far as the big green revolution or the AOC agenda or Bernie's nineteen point plan, the Repubs are going to kill all that stuff.
Natasha Bertrand [00:35:57] Yeah, and I think the notion that McConnell, there was a story about a week ago that McConnell was going to try to block any progressives that Joe Biden might try to nominate for Senate confirmed positions, I think that's kind of moot because, you know, the people that are surrounding Biden at the highest levels, his most senior advisers are not, you know, hard core progressives, people like Tony Blinken were always the front runners for positions like secretary of state and, y'know, perhaps CIA director. So this idea that McConnell is going to be a check on that kind of thing is kind of silly, frankly, because while Joe Biden will have to elevate certain people, I think, in the Progressive Party, I don't think that these cabinet positions are going to go to anyone that might be surprising, knowing Joe Biden's history and his politics.
Harry Litman [00:36:41] Republicans in the cabinet, anyone?
Natasha Bertrand [00:36:44] Sure.
Mike Murphy [00:36:45] Eh, you know, maybe a semi-Republican. You know, I doubt it right now. I mean, the problem is somebody will say, Mitt Romney, you don't want to lose him in the Senate, because somebody new from Utah is going to be more hardcore. So, you know, I think but, you know, there's talk of Meg Whitman, people like that. But as far as an elected Republican politician coming over, you know, maybe Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, would like to - I'm guessing, I don't know .There's Larry Hogan, but I think Biden would like the optics of it, but he's going to be under all kinds of diversity pressure. He's got the Mayor Petes of the world and the Elizabeth Warrens. You know, a lot of people are going to want a lot of stuff, but I think Natasha's point is really good. The Biden inner circle is not the Politburo. They're kind of old school centered, business friendly Democrats. And I think - let's put it this way, they could appease the progressives by giving away some powerful cabinet, and the progressives will still be unhappy 90 days later if he hasn't jumped on the agenda. So I think, I think they're going to bring back Clinton triangulation, which is smart, and it works and it generally gets things done.
Harry Litman [00:37:46] I mean, Biden himself, dating back to his college days, you know, has always positioned himself arm's length from, you know, more utopian, radical, whatever. Even as a kid, he was the, you know, there was that great profile recently in The New York Times with him as sort of Mr. Cardigan sweater on the Delaware campus.
Joe Lockhart [00:38:05] Yeah, no, listen, a couple of points. One on that Harry, some of this is what Biden has chosen to concentrate on in his life. And up until he became vice president, more than anything, he dealt with foreign policy. You know, he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and that's not a hotbed of ideological partisanship, it certainly wasn't when he was there, maybe it is now. Second point, when you look at Biden's inner circle, it's you know, I used to say that Hillary's inner circle, I remember when Patti Solis was pushed aside and people said, you know, she needs fresh blood. Well, Patti had been with her for like 20 years, so she went to Maggie Williams, who'd been with her for 35 years.
It's, it is the same with Biden's inner circle. I, I interviewed for a job in 1987 with him, and he offered me the job on his campaign as his press secretary, and before I could start he dropped out. All of the people that I interviewed in that process are still there. That's the same group of people, and there is continuity. And I think the last point is, when you look at McConnell, McConnell more than anything understands power. It has never been about a certain policy, and I think if he views, he's going to get backed into a corner by rebuffing the bipartisan president who's reaching out to him and trying to make a deal for him, you'll see what he did, you know, early in the Obama administration with things like the debt limit, where he came in and he made the deal because it was the best thing for his caucus, it was the best thing to keep power.
Harry Litman [00:39:43] Well so backed into a corner vis a vis 2022? When there are several R's in cycle, or what's the sort of leverage that he wants to temporize?
Joe Lockhart [00:39:52] I think that while Trump was dominating all of the news coverage, McConnell had the liberty to go out and be ruthless in putting in judicial nominees. With Trump no longer there, McConnell is now the leader of the party and he can't, for his caucus, be seen as Dr. No or the Grim Reaper. He could be the Grim Reaper when he wasn't the center of attention, but now he's the, he's the leader of the Republican Party, and I think the optics politicians that people that Mike mentioned, like Tom Cotton and Hollis, McConnell, is going to have to worry a little bit more about that than he has in the last four years. And Biden knows what buttons to push with him. So, you know, I wouldn't, I just wouldn't rule out that there's some chance of the old style triangulation that I used to have fun with.
Mike Murphy [00:40:44] Yeah, I just want to hallelujah that, and point out the Repubs have a real call to make about the midterms. On one side, you can say the more Biden's a failure the first term, etc., etc., but the pollsters, to the extent they're allowed in the room anymore, all say look, the brand is terrible and the races that are up in the midterms are, it's tough. We could really blow our one seat or whatever we have or our dead even deal. I wrote a thing in the board back in August, which is kind of a website of opinion that in the never Trump world is worth following, that you can argue from Biden's point of view a one vote Republican bare, hanging on by their fingernails majority, gives them a little more room to maneuver and hold off his left than the Repubs in minority, where they got nothing to do but scratch and try to fight their way back in the midterms, give them something to lose.
So anyway, and that'll be a fight in the caucus because the flame throwers are going to say no, total opposition. By the way, I'll be in New Hampshire tomorrow. While the others who are thinking about hanging on to control and the bad map the Senate GOP has in '22 are going to be like, 'hey, let's take away the attacks on us by doing some things. We can cut them half in size, but we need a story here.' And as Joe says, Mitch is about holding the majority, whatever the smarter move politically for the whole caucus will be, not for two guys who want to go beat Eric Trump in the South Carolina primary one day, Mitch will make that move.
Joe Lockhart [00:42:08] And I think if you look back to the Clinton era and triangulation, we found it much easier to deal with a Republican with a split Congress, because Congress had a stake in it. The Republicans had a stake, they were, they could be seen as the people holding it up. When the Democrats were in control, the story was, why can't we get all the Democrats to sign on a piece of legislation? And, you know, let's say that Georgia wins. Democrats get both, a lot of the progressives are going to sit up and say, oh, we can do things like stack the court. Well, Joe Manchin needs to vote for stacking the court, and then that's a disaster for Biden to have 98 percent of his party for something and have the two percent, Joe, and I'm not picking on Joe Manchin, he's a sensible guy, but he's not going to be for it. And that's, that's going to make Biden look weak. What makes Biden look strong is standing up to McConnell, going around the country, using the power of the presidency to build support and put pressure on McConnell. That's the way triangulation works.
Harry Litman [00:43:10] So what about foreign policy? You know, the Paris mayor tweets yesterday, welcome home, America. Trump did really serious damage to both our standing and our alliances in four years, is just Biden raising his hand enough to undo 90 percent of that, or and it is, as you said, his sort of prime focus and hobbyhorse, how tough is that job?
Mike Murphy [00:43:38] Well, quickly, Biden can do a lot of that by himself. And the truth is, the establishment in the foreign policy world among R's and D's is happy with Biden than they'd ever be of Trump, who was a damager. So Biden can do a lot, and he will not get nearly the vociferous opposition that the domestic budget stuff [unintelligible]. So, but you're right. Then, of course, the Europeans, being shrewd, are going to enjoy this because they're going to say, oh, my so, you know, they're going to try to really extract a price to dig out of it. On the other hand, they're going to be delighted we're back to some normalcy.
Natasha Bertrand [00:44:08] I agree. I think that, I honestly don't think it's going to be that much of an uphill battle to restore faith in these alliances, because Biden is so experienced in this area, right? I mean, he served as vice president for eight years, he has these relationships. You know, it may be tougher for him to relate to the kinds of leaders that the president was so good at relating to, so people like Putin, for example, that may be a little bit tough, but he has people around him who are deeply, deeply experienced, and this is the way that he's not only going to revamp the foreign policy infrastructure here, but also the intelligence community. He's going to hit the ground running and be able to do that because he's, he's not going to have people around him like Trump did when he first got into office that have no idea, frankly, what they're doing. I think it's going to be a return, at least for a bit, to status quo, and the people that have been congratulating him so far on Twitter are the world leaders. Many of them have said, you know, 'I've worked with you for four decades. I've known you for decades. I look forward to working with you again.' So it's going to be a very familiar thing for these allies, and I think because of that, it's going to be a lot easier for things to kind of shift back into normalcy.
Mike Murphy [00:45:16] There will be Republican support for Biden to grind on Putin a bit, which is a point of connection and good politics for Biden.
Harry Litman [00:45:23] Yeah, and, you know, Biden here really has a kind of surefootedness. I, I took Joe's point about him being the guy in the room who temporizes a little on the domestic side, but he really knows what he wants to do and feels like he knows the foreign policy world. So he'll be the actual leader of the free world again. All right, we just have a couple minutes for our final feature of Five Words or Fewer, where we take a question from a listener and each of us has to answer in five words or fewer. Today's question comes from Olivia Jessner, who asks, "What will success look like for Biden in terms of attacking the virus?"
Mike Murphy [00:46:04] Vaccine Spring, summer economic boom.
Joe Lockhart [00:46:08] I think I would say: changing public behavior, saving lives. I think because, I think just getting people to wear the goddamn masks is the single most important thing you can do. So that's what I think.
Natasha Bertrand [00:46:23] Yeah. Making masks cool again.
Harry Litman [00:46:26] Well, OK, what I had is more general. I like your guys' but: curve flatten, then vaccine summer.
Thank you very much to Mike, Joe and Natasha, and thank you very much, listeners, for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts, and please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter @TalkingFedsPod to find out about future episodes and other Feds-related content. You can check us out on the web, talkingfeds.com , where we have full episode transcripts, and you can look to see our latest offerings on Patreon, where we post discussions about special topics exclusively for supporters, as well as ad-free episodes. Submit your questions to questions@talkingfeds.com , whether it's for Five Words or Fewer, or general questions about the inner workings of the legal system for our Sidebar segments. Thanks for tuning in, and don't worry: as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking.
Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Don Griffin are our contributing writers. Production assistance by Matt McArdle. Our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Thanks very much to the great John Malkovich for explaining standards for murder prosecutions. And finally, our gratitude, as always, to the amazing Philip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Dalito, LLC. I'm Harry Litman, see you next time.
